DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — At a meeting Tuesday night, a group of Airbnb hosts met with Dayton city planners to discuss the issues they see with the city’s vision.
City leaders say that they have plans to complete data research about short-term rentals so that they can figure out what their next steps to fixing housing issues are.
Dayton awarded a competitive bid request to a company called Harmari for software services for short-term rentals so the city can identify short-term rental addresses.
At the Tuesday meeting, Airbnb owners from throughout the community came together to say they are not behind the problems the city is facing, especially because they make up such a small amount of the population of rental units.
“Things are happening and properties that are unregistered, rentals, registered, long term rentals, violent crime, drugs, lots of things that are not happening at short term rentals,” Janet Michaelis, a Dayton-area Airbnb host community leader, said.
“16 over 16,000 registered rentals in the city of Dayton. And there are maybe 300 Airbnbs. Why would you want to concentrate so much effort from the city and money on scrutinizing that subgroup when it’s not it’s obviously not the source of the problems?”
However, city officials say not all Airbnbs in the city are registered and that causes problems for other homeowners in those areas.
